211–220 of 387 posts
If people didn’t use Autodesk’s software I wouldn’t have to pay a surreal amount of money to use their binary API so my cad program can write DWG. But the fact is DWG is the de facto standard in so many engineering disciplines, and that probably won’t change. The format is also so convoluted and complex that I doubt even Autodesk could ever write a new implementation of it. If someone succeeds, they will still keep c…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJwG-qt-sgk
https://www.blendernation.com/2014/10/28/blender-conference-...
>Blender Conference: Ton talks about Autodesk, ceiling crashes
>While Ton was talking about Autodesk during the Blender Conference, part of the ceiling of the Balie came crashing down, hitting him on the head. So remember folks: Autodesk is watching! ;-)
>Here's a picture of Ton after the event:
https://media.blendernation.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/T...
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That’s a valid request. However, continued support or bug fixes in that case might require a much higher upfront price than the one you might be used to. While it’s easy to blame the developers of a product for real or perceived flaws, even if operated entirely offline software products interact with their environment. Hence, a bug you’re having might be due to an operating system update, another third-party applicat…
I'm not against subscription pricing in principle, but in practice newly introduced subscription pricing pretty much always ends up being significantly more expensive than original pricing, and that's just greed. Also there is often no longer an option to stop paying and just continue using your version, even if you've been paying for the subscription for years. Or they only let you use an old version so you'll need…
You pay a yearly fee to get the latest stuff within that year and you can use the current or any previous version forever if you stop paying.
There was a bit of mob forming with JetBrains first announced the subscription model and the current one developed by working with their customers.
This subscription model, combined with the largely open source codebase for their products means I'll probably be paying JetBrains for the rest of my life.
You see this pattern for all professional tools, which have a very narrow expert audience. After a period of open competition, that for most fields ended in the 80s and 90s, a closed source competitor emerges which becomes the industry standard. Massive moats, file formats, plugin investment, teaching of the tools in schools etc. prevent real competition, and the company becomes a fantastic cash cow. In the last deca…
You mean something a bit like - what's the word? - a patent? That won't solve the problem, because this is not a software problem. It's an economic problem. To maximise profit you need to dominate a market by 1) locking out competitors 2) forcing customers to give you money 3) spending as little as possible on continued development. This happens because that's how capitalism works. It's an inevitable consequence. Eff…
The operation of free markets is Intro to Econ material. You should pursue a remedial course that you may understand this before proposing remedies, because while some of your proposed remedies hit near the mark, I think this is by accident.
The most effective remedy is competition, achieved once you can dismantle the barriers to entry. You mention antitrust in passing, which is the key policy-based approach, and regulatory provisions against trusts are mentioned in passing in the article — but mostly you focus on a "union" of customers, and I have grave doubts to its efficacy in practice. There is a massive coordination problem here, thousands of firms and their legal departments who must agree to risk substantial consequences individually in order (denying themselves key software) to achieve the collective goal.
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As an emerging EE, I fully agree. I honestly believe it could be done with solid quality. Early today I saw this very old video of Elon at SpaceX with their design software [1]. It's amazing to me that this video was six years ago. Revit is the prized gem. Whomever creates it, focus on Revit and focus on the pain-points. [1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNqs_S-zEBY
I saw that Leap Motion [0] video almost 10 years ago and have wanted to have one ever since. Sadly, it seems they didn't sell enough to sustain theirselves and have mostly concluded their incredible journey [1]. I had a few friends that worked in 3D modelling them and they really wanted to try it out for sculpting. I guess actually swinging your hands around in air like Tom Cruise in Minority Report was too tiring fo…
I bet the Index has potential for that with the finger control
There's so many bad things to say about AutoDesk beyond the unhelpful/broken "move to the cloud" ... But if I had to pick one, it's AutoDesk's systematic attempt to build a closed ecosystem à la FaceBook / Apple. They do it, among other things, via tight control of the data file format, and an ever-changing unpublished specification for those. There was a time when there was decent exporters in AutoDesk products, so…
"Getting a DXF or DWF into any other app in 2020 is a freaking nightmare." At least you can do it on a non-Autodesk affiliated software stack that more-or-less works https://www.opendesign.com/
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Not everybody likes to hear it, but archive.is is an illegal operation. In some countries, posting archive.is links may even be illegal as well (it might be interpreted by a court as "Aiding and Abetting Criminal Copyright Infringement")
how i archive.is illegal but Way Back machine not? Seems odd that you isolate a single archive service as illegal instead of saying "Internet Archiving is an illegal operation"
As you said, bona fide archiving happens on archive.org
I don’t really understand SaaS for such mature products. My work (woodworking) is about making pieces of furniture. Using software is only a part of the process. It is not the actual goal. I want to pay a one off price for a stable and feature complete tool. I don’t want to fund a bunch of developers noodling around with new features I don’t want, or fixing bugs they should be patching anyway, as part of the original…
You have chosen the tool which is not actually owned by you and does not have good substitution from another vendor. No wonder you have exposed yourself to rent-seeking and other things you don't want. It's not a situation that can be solved by individual, I know. But a profession as a collective should group around open tools.
I had the idea to create a company that helps organizations create these niche open source governance structures. While I love the result (more open source), I have no business or non-profit skills, and it sounds like a hard boring job. I do recommend someone explore this space, who knows it might not be that difficult.
Unfortunately yes, I've tried the alternatives and PS is still the best by many measures so I'm stuck paying for nothing but permission to use the software. https://www.bloggerzune.com/2019/11/made-money-for-blogging-...
https://www.bloggerzune.com/2019/11/requirements-for-google-...
https://www.bloggerzune.com/2019/11/important-content-market...
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Blender should be considered a true gem of the open source community. But the first UIs were confusing at best and infuriating at worst.
I believe Blender's UI is still confusing and is infuriating to me. Disclaimer: I am an amateur when it comes to 3D modelling, but I was able to figure out pretty much everything I needed to make things in Lightwave back in the 90's, but even after watching several tutorials I still struggle with Blender.
